Digital cameras are used by a growing number of consumer and professional photographers. These cameras use one or more CCD or CMOS image sensors to capture images, and digitally process these captured images to produce digital image files, which are stored in a digital memory in the camera, typically on a removable memory card. The captured image files can be transferred to local computers and other devices, such as photo printers and digital picture frames, using wired or wireless interfaces. The image files can also be transferred to websites and photo service providers, either by transferring the files from the local computers or by using a wireless interface in the digital camera that communicates with a wireless network. Suitable wireless networks include cellular networks, such as CDMA and 3GSM, and WiFi networks.
Wireless networks can provide an easy way to automatically transfer images taken by a digital camera to other devices and systems, since there is no need for the user to physically connect a cable between the camera and device, or physically take a memory card out of the camera and place it in a card reader in the computer or other device.
It is known that digital images can be wirelessly transferred from a digital camera and stored by a service provider. In particular, the digital camera can include a wireless modem and a user interface for selecting specific images to be uploaded to a service provider, and for selecting other users who are allowed to view the images, as described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,057,648, titled “Capturing digital images to be transferred to a service provider for storage”, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
It is known that digital cameras can communicate with network service providers using a variety of protocols, which can be selected using icons on the camera's image display, as described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,784,924, titled “Network configuration file for automatically transferring images from an electronic still camera”, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. The camera's image display can also display feedback from the network service provider, such as “transfer in progress” and “transfer complete”.
It is known that digital cameras can stores profiles that relate to how captured digital images should be transferred to other devices. The profiles can include an “image deletion preference”, indicating whether the files having that preference should be deleted after being transferred from the camera to a host computer, as described in commonly assigned EP patent EP 1 339 214, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Because the user does not need to perform a physical action in order to wirelessly transfer images captured with a wireless digital camera, the user may not understand whether or not images captured by their camera have been transferred to other devices. For example, the user may capture some images at a remote location, where the digital camera is unable to access the wireless network. In this case, the digital images cannot be immediately transferred from the camera, and need to be transferred at a later time. For example, if the wireless camera using a WiFi modem, and the pictures are taken during a vacation to a beach, there is unlikely to be a WiFi access point which can communicate with the camera. When the user later takes the camera to a location, such as a hotel, with WiFi access, or when the user returns from their vacation to their home which has a WiFi network, they can then transfer their images. However, this requires that the user turn on the camera in order to transfer the images, which means that the transfer is not automatic. Furthermore, the user is likely to be unaware of whether or not particular images have already been wirelessly transferred from the camera. Therefore, from a practical point of view, the wireless camera may be too complicated for the user.
Users face difficulty when the camera's internal memory or a memory card attached to the camera fills up and cannot hold any further images. The users of camera 330 want to take more pictures but do not want to delete pictures that have not yet been transferred to another storage location (e.g., home PC or web site). The user may also want to maintain some pictures on the camera for sharing with friends, for example by viewing the pictures using the camera display.